Lean ITP Lessons Learned final class and dinner party

1. Class 12 / 12
May 4, 2015
Jen van der Meer | jd1159 at nyu dot edu
Josh Knowles | chasing at spaceship dot com
LEAN
LAUNCHPAD
AT NYU ITP

2. 6:30 – 6:30 Welcome and Eat
6:30 – 7:00 Jen and Josh Lessons Learned
7:00 Pace Notes
7:30 Luma
8:00 Lovoy
8:30 BeWell
TODAY:

3. .
WE ARE AT THE END AND THE BEGINNING
2/2
Business Models
Customer Development
2/9
Value Proposition
Research tools
2/16
President’s Day
2/23
Customer Segments
Research Tools
3/23
Spring Break
3/9
Customer Relationships
Product Development
3/23
Resources
Activities + Costs
3/30
Product Development
UX and User Interface
Design
4/6
UI UX Part 2
4/13
Product Development
User test
4/20
Product development
4/27
Product MVP
May!
Delicious Celebration
Lessons Learned
3/2
Revenue Streams
Distribution Channels

4. TODAY: LESSONS LEARNED
Not a demo day. – No correlation between great PowerPoint or videos and a two minute
demo to building a successful business model.
Instead: we’ll have Learning Demos.
_Major insights
_Pivots from original business model assumptions
_Metrics that mattered
“Lessons Learned” day allows us to directly assess the ability of the team to learn, pivot
and move forward.
What your future business partners, investors, and employees will seek out as you grow
your companies.

5. 5
WHAT CAME BEFORE STEVE AND ERIC
WHAT WE LEARNED

6. 1. THERE IS STRENGTH IN ASKING FOR HELP
The structure of the course with mentors and advisors follows the Stanford Lean Lean
LaunchPad blueprint – advisors as lecturers and helpful participants, but we did ask
Mentors to show up, week after week, and help out individual teams.
There was skepticism that NYC, and NYU, and ITP was ready for this level of
commitment, on a volunteer basis.
The first person I asked asked me for money, and status, and more.
The next 25 people I asked said yes, and all came when called, and some even kept
showing up for more.
Thank you. Yes, NYC is building a strong tech ecosystem.

7. • Sarah Krasley, Autodesk
• John Bachir, Medstro
• Michal Krasnodebski, Shutterstock.
THANK YOU MENTORS

8. • Angad Singh, Lolly Wolly Doodle
• Chris Mlne, IDEO
• Tammy Kwan, Cognitive Toy Box
• Britta Riley, Windowfarms
• Christin Roman, UX Designer
• Julie Berkun Fagjenbaum, Tweed
Wolf
• Frank Rimalovski, NYU
• Lindsey Marshall, NYU
• Michal Krasnodebski, Shutterstock
• Scott Miller, Dragon Innovation, Bolt
Ventures.
• Peter Fusco, Lowenstein
• Tami Reiss, Cyrus Innovation
• Tarikh Korula, Seen.co
• Alex Herrity, Signals
• Chstine Lemke, Evidation Health
• Travis Hardman, Daily Voice
• Nick Chirls, Alex Lines, Notation
Capital
THANK YOU ADVISORS AND SPEAKERS

9. • Tom Igoe, ITP
• Dan O’Sullivan, ITP
• Frank Rimalovski, NYU Entrepreneurs Institute
• Lindsey Marshall, NYU Entrepreneurs Institute
THANK YOU NYU

10. 1. ENTER WITH A SACRIFICIAL PROTOTYPE
We learned the concept of the sacrificial prototype from Chris Milne of IDEO:
Concepts designed to spark conversation, and help people understand an issue, to which
we deliberately do not form an attachment.
Design it so it looks unfinished – and people will give you more honest and useful
feedback because they will not feel like they are hurting your feelings. They will truly co-
create with you.
Lesson learned: emphasize the sacrificial prototype for the class

11. 2. PREPARE TO BE WRONG
All student teams had hypotheses that were incorrect, and found this out through
customer discovery and competitive intelligence.
But it took some time – there was a lag affect for a few teams to acknowledge this truth
and pivot.
While many had already conducted usability tests, it’s a wholly different experience to ask
for an opinion about the product you so dearly love.
How do we prepare a group of overachievers to celebrate this moment of wrong?
Lesson learned – build into the mentorship and advisor-ship more personal stories of
what it means to be wrong, but then pivot, and find the way forward.

13. 3. PIVOTING IS NOT FLIP FLOPPING
It starts with your team values
Then your vision
Why do you want to do this?
Then find a segment, a market, and a value proposition that fulfills this vision.
Customer discovery is not about collecting features lists from prospective customers or
running lots of focus groups, and pivoting each time you hear something new.
“The founders define the product vision and then use customer discovery to find
customers and a market for that vision.”
-Steve Blank, The Startup Owner’s Manual

14. PIVOTING GETS YOU CLOSER TO
YOUR VISION

15. 4. MORE UX HELP
But some of our strongest lessons learned and feedback came from building out the
initial onboarding experience and initial MVP – how do we build this in earlier in the
process.
Use Personas, Needs, and Tasks to narrow down feature sets has helped a number of
our teams decide which aspects to build for their MVP.

16. 5. KEEP A LIST OF INVALIDATED RESULTS
Keep them in a “one day” file
You never know when cultural norms shift
Technology gets ever more present
Components dwindle down to zero cost
What will be possible, but isn’t possible now

17. NEXT: PITCHFEST 2015
This year we have scheduled the workshop series and Pitchfest for after Thesis Week
and the ITP show. We have also augmented the prep workshops to include business
model and design thinking exercises to connect students to their primary intentions and
to tell a persuasive story.
• Idea Submission: Friday May 22, 2015
• Workshop 1: Monday June 1, 2015
• Workshop 2: Monday June 8, 2015
• Workshop 3: Monday June 15, 2015
• Pitchfest 4: Wednesday, June 17, 2015

18. Thank you!
Jen van der Meer | jd1159 at nyu dot edu
Josh Knowles | chasing at spaceship dot com
LEAN
LAUNCHPAD
AT NYU ITP